[dack70]

I know this news is a little old, but I don't remember seeing anyone post it here. See quote below and link to the article after that.


"It looks like the first Google TV App to be announced outside of the Google I/O conference will be from Boxee Candler Blog interviewed Andrew Kippen of Boxee to ask him about his companies take on Google TV. Since both GTV and Boxee do similar things, a little bit of a competitive bite would have been highly expected. Instead, Kippen seemed eager."


"He stated that it would be great to see an open OS like Android gain home entertainment market share. He also confirmed that Boxee will be building an Android-based app so that consumers can download Boxee on their TVs. Google TV boxes with a Boxee application? Sign me the hell up."


LINK:
http://www.i4u.com/35894/boxee-working-google-tv-app

 

[JonV]



Quote:
Originally Posted by dack70 /forum/post/19445038


The Logitech media player app that comes preinstalled on the Revue is still in beta and it does not work very well. They claim they will be able to play many of the popular media formats though. I suspect there will be software updates to this app that will eventually allow you to play your media files. And certainly in early 2011, when they open up the Android Market for GTV, developers will start creating other media player apps. I know that the very popular VLC Media player is in the works right now for the Android OS, and that media player plays every media format known to man. So I personally would not waste your time converting all of your media right now. I am in the same boat as you. I have a ton of media and only some of it plays on my Revue, but I'm just waiting for some software updates that I'm pretty sure will be coming soon.

Thanks. Music to my ears, er, eyes! I was hoping this would be the case. That's why I liked GTV: not so much for what it is today but what it can be tomorrow. I see that growth every day with my Droid phone.

 

[arswhat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jakmal /forum/post/19443226


The only thing left is the 'rest of the web experience' thing.


Btw, have you visited websites which have Java applets in them? How is the navigation? Example site: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/coffeebre...crossWord.html

This is an interesting kind of reality show! You ask dack to do stuff, and he goes to do it

Quote:
Originally Posted by dack70 /forum/post/19443264


Sudoku worked perfectly, Jigsaw said missing plugin, and Crossword was just blank.

And btw, when i tried the Crossword in Firefox4, java crashed on the page with some exceptioin. Jigsaw was blank. Sudoku worked

 

[GoLaLakers]

@Lupismaximus


Great post. I would probably have gotten GOOGLE TV had they supported TV's without HDMI. 2 of my older sets only have component/DVI connections. It's a bummer as I consider myself an early adopter. 1 TV will be upgraded within the next 6 months, but for now I will have to do with Roku and Boxee.

 

[dack70]



Quote:
Originally Posted by arswhat /forum/post/19445530


This is an interesting kind of reality show! You ask dack to do stuff, and he goes to do it

And btw, when i tried the Crossword in Firefox4, java crashed on the page with some exceptioin. Jigsaw was blank. Sudoku worked

Yeah, I went back and tried these games on IE9 beta, Chrome 7 (desktop), and Firefox 4, and got mixed results on each game. So, GTV is not the only thing getting mixed results on this site. I'm still curious about being able to install a Java plugin for the Chrome browser on GTV. I'll post the question at the Logitech forum now.


After spending a lot of time on GTV, I think they can claim the "full web experience", just as any other browser can. Meaning, not all sites work perfectly on all browsers or platforms. GTV does a very nice job IMHO.

 

[sean_w_smith]



Quote:
Originally Posted by arswhat /forum/post/19445530


This is an interesting kind of reality show! You ask dack to do stuff, and he goes to do it

And btw, when i tried the Crossword in Firefox4, java crashed on the page with some exceptioin. Jigsaw was blank. Sudoku worked

jigsaw works for me in firefox

 

[arswhat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by dack70 /forum/post/19445694


Yeah, I went back and tried these games on IE9 beta, Chrome 7 (desktop), and Firefox 4, and got mixed results on each game. So, GTV is not the only thing getting mixed results on this site. I'm still curious about being able to install a Java plugin for the Chrome browser on GTV. I'll post the question at the Logitech forum now.

I think perhaps Oracle hates Google at the moment, so they are not going to help with that. But perhaps it doesn't matter so much, i get the feeling Java is dying out on the web.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dack70 /forum/post/19445694


After spending a lot of time on GTV, I think they can claim the "full web experience", just as any other browser can. Meaning, not all sites work perfectly on all browsers or platforms. GTV does a very nice job IMHO.

Yeah. Though perhaps there will be greater consistency in what site don't work, since the GTV's will be more consistent in their OS - as opposed to all our private computers which run all kinds of different stuff

 

[jakmal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sean_w_smith Ganesh, I understand your paper benchmarking efforts here but what is the real problem. I tested the GTV on a lot of video and chrome/flash preformed very well. I didn't explicitly try to the test various codecs that might be in flash video but I failed to find a site that had video playback issues. I'm sure there could be some but the browser experience in gtv was its best attribute. Saying that it wont meet the needs of the "average user" without even trying one seems harsh and unnecessary. I think it will meet a lot of peoples needs. I would be interested in hearing from actual users about what content they are having problems with. back to your regularly scheduled soap opera. Sean

Sean,


The main aim in my posts in to find out why the reception to GTV is not universally good ( say, like the reception to the iPhone was -- though I am no Apple fan

). I agree with you that the GTV is able to meet the needs of the average user (any Atom nettop with Ion can), but does it meet the expectations? Needs and expectations/wants are vastly different.


A couple of my colleagues will be carrying out the review of the GTV on our website, so the official stance of AnandTech will be what they write. In the meanwhile, I am trying to find out here where the device satisfies customers and where it doesn't.


I was sceptical of universal web video playback, but I am now 95% convinced about it from dack70's tests. But, surely, GTV has missed a point by not including the functionality delivered by Boxee Box wrt local media. Considering that it is the same chipset, and Boxee has a fraction of the number of employees that Logitech / Google probably employed on the Revue, it is a real disappointment. As for Boxee bringing a Boxee app to GTV, I am sure that it will be a paid app of sorts if they 'transfer' all the licenses they obtained for the Boxee Box to their app too. But, we will have to wait and watch how that plays out.

 

[dack70]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakmal Sean, The main aim in my posts in to find out why the reception to GTV is not universally good ( say, like the reception to the iPhone was -- though I am no Apple fan ). I agree with you that the GTV is able to meet the needs of the average user (any Atom nettop with Ion can), but does it meet the expectations? Needs and expectations/wants are vastly different. A couple of my colleagues will be carrying out the review of the GTV on our website, so the official stance of AnandTech will be what they write. In the meanwhile, I am trying to find out here where the device satisfies customers and where it doesn't. I was sceptical of universal web video playback, but I am now 95% convinced about it from dack70's tests. But, surely, GTV has missed a point by not including the functionality delivered by Boxee Box wrt local media. Considering that it is the same chipset, and Boxee has a fraction of the number of employees that Logitech / Google probably employed on the Revue, it is a real disappointment. As for Boxee bringing a Boxee app to GTV, I am sure that it will be a paid app of sorts if they 'transfer' all the licenses they obtained for the Boxee Box to their app too. But, we will have to wait and watch how that plays out.

I think it's clear that I'm a fan of this product (Revue/GTV), but I will admit that it will disappoint a good number of people in it's current state (especially given the price). However, I am VERY confident the Google TV platform will ultimately succeed. It is simply too good of an idea, not to succeed. But this is just my personal opinion.

 

[arswhat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakmal The main aim in my posts in to find out why the reception to GTV is not universally good

I would say that probably doesn't have so much with the GTV but the G in general.

A lot of the technorati are upset with Google over the net neutrality dance with Verizon, and a lot of the 'normals' are going through a "Google is too big" phase. So perhaps its just time to beat up on Google

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakmal But, surely, GTV has missed a point by not including the functionality delivered by Boxee Box wrt local media. Considering that it is the same chipset, and Boxee has a fraction of the number of employees that Logitech / Google probably employed on the Revue, it is a real disappointment.

It is very odd (unless they have some stuff in beta which will be out real soon now). I mean we know Google would prefer you just surf around all the time, but they should know that providing a comprehensive set of playback abilities for local media would be a huge draw as well - and once people are on board, the might get addicted to web shows as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakmal As for Boxee bringing a Boxee app to GTV, I am sure that it will be a paid app of sorts if they 'transfer' all the licenses they obtained for the Boxee Box to their app too. But, we will have to wait and watch how that plays out.

And of course there might be xbmc - on their forums many users are asking if they couldn't have a version for the Google TV

 

[arswhat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dack70 I think it's clear that I'm a fan of this product (Revue/GTV), but I will admit that it will disappoint a good number of people in it's current state (especially given the price). However, I am VERY confident the Google TV platform will ultimately succeed. It is simply too good of an idea, not to succeed. But this is just my personal opinion.

Btw dack (I just picked this to reply to, even though I want to say something else ;-) (and I agree btw)


If you are still up for a bit of experimentation, could you check out this site and see how it works?

http://vtuner.com/setupapp/guide/asp.../startpage.asp


It's a "virtual" radio tuner - with access to mostly radio (a few tv stations) with free content from around the world.

 

[jakmal]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dack70 I think it's clear that I'm a fan of this product (Revue/GTV), but I will admit that it will disappoint a good number of people in it's current state (especially given the price). However, I am VERY confident the Google TV platform will ultimately succeed. It is simply too good of an idea, not to succeed. But this is just my personal opinion.

Can you navigate to the following pages on GTV and report back on the status of playback of the embedded videos?

http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/psych...lverlight-site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIwNN9UsSCE


If the latter video plays back on GTV, it is double standards by Google, since the video is supposed to be not played back on TV connected devices (it doesn't play on LG's YouTube app on their TVs or on the WDTV Live Hub). Just curious how Google treats the publisher's request when it comes to experiencing it on a gadget / platform they created on their own.

 

[thyname]

... want to return it. I am really frustrated and tired spending hours on it. I love the interface, don't get me wrong but I get picture freeze and lock up when playing tv from Cox Cable. I have Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR. It happens so often, sometimes every 30 minutes. I called the Logitech tech support several times, no fix. Anybody has any feedback on me? Thanks

 

[drdigital1]

Lupismaximus wrote an excellent review of the key solutions. My objective is to watch on my big screen TV (with wife-friendly ease of navigation) 2 types of shows:

• ESPN3
• a couple of foreign TV stations

Both are available on the web but I can currently watch only on my PC. It seems to me that ONLY GTV would allow me to watch these on my TV because it has a FULL browser. I tried to watch these on my PC using the Boxee browser (neither is available through Boxee channels) and both the quality and the ease of navigation are terrible.

Am I right? And if I am, why are so many people in love with Boxee when the available content is so limited?!

 

[lrmat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by thyname /forum/post/0


... want to return it. I am really frustrated and tired spending hours on it. I love the interface, don't get me wrong but I get picture freeze and lock up when playing tv from Cox Cable. I have Scientific Atlanta 8300 HD DVR. It happens so often, sometimes every 30 minutes. I called the Logitech tech support several times, no fix. Anybody has any feedback on me? Thanks

I have the sam STB on Time Warner Cable in NY..... No problems whatsoever. Maybe faulty hdmi cable?

 

[arswhat]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jakmal /forum/post/19447566


Can you navigate to the following pages on GTV and report back on the status of playback of the embedded videos?

http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/psych...lverlight-site

Ahh, now you are getting sneaky! That requires silverlight, which you know Google TV doesn't have installed

(and I doubt microsoft is going to make a version)


Of course its microsoft being asses, there is no reason to invent silverlight, they could have used javascript.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jakmal /forum/post/19447566


If the latter video plays back on GTV, it is double standards by Google, since the video is supposed to be not played back on TV connected devices (it doesn't play on LG's YouTube app on their TVs or on the WDTV Live Hub). Just curious how Google treats the publisher's request when it comes to experiencing it on a gadget / platform they created on their own.

Well, its totally blocked here. However, Google have a double standard already (unless there is some small print I haven't seen) - if you use for instance the Playstation 3 browser to view youtube, you are only allowed to view the low res crap versions of videos. And the first version of the WDTV Live would play back HD videos from Youtube - then after some discussions with Google, the firmware was changed to only show low res versions. But perhaps Google want money for that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by drdigital1 /forum/post/19448074


I tried to watch these on my PC using the Boxee browser (neither is available through Boxee channels) and both the quality and the ease of navigation are terrible.

Am I right? And if I am, why are so many people in love with Boxee when the available content is so limited?!

I think the Boxee people are talking about is the Boxee Box version, ie, a hardware device supposed to come out next week. And not the PC version.


Of course they may end up being blocked as well on the device.

 

[Cozmo85]



Quote:
Originally Posted by drdigital1 /forum/post/19448074


Lupismaximus wrote an excellent review of the key solutions. My objective is to watch on my big screen TV (with wife-friendly ease of navigation) 2 types of shows:

• ESPN3
• a couple of foreign TV stations

Both are available on the web but I can currently watch only on my PC. It seems to me that ONLY GTV would allow me to watch these on my TV because it has a FULL browser. I tried to watch these on my PC using the Boxee browser (neither is available through Boxee channels) and both the quality and the ease of navigation are terrible.

Am I right? And if I am, why are so many people in love with Boxee when the available content is so limited?!

Boxee browser in the current public beta is not whats in the boxee box/1.0 software. 1.0 has a new webkit browser. The one in the current beta was never really meant to work.

 

[jakmal]



Quote:
Originally Posted by arswhat /forum/post/19448158


Ahh, now you are getting sneaky! That requires silverlight, which you know Google TV doesn't have installed

(and I doubt microsoft is going to make a version)


Of course its microsoft being asses, there is no reason to invent silverlight, they could have used javascript.

This is the marketing talk for Google TV right from their official page :

Quote:
With Google Chrome and Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Google TV lets you access everything on the web. Watch your favorite web videos, view photos, play games, check fantasy scores, chat with friends, and do everything else you're accustomed to doing online.

So, basically it is NOT EVERYTHING on the web. They even claim you can play games, but we saw how it was when dack70 tried playing a Flash game. Do everything you are accustomed to doing online is not true if one is used to watching MSDN videos. The latter, at least, is possible using an Atom nettop.


As I said before, I am probably 80 - 90% OK with the web video capabilities. Google TV should have really been a HTPC add-on card with dedicated OS instead of the current solution.

Quote:
Well, its totally blocked here. However, Google have a double standard already (unless there is some small print I haven't seen) - if you use for instance the Playstation 3 browser to view youtube, you are only allowed to view the low res crap versions of videos. And the first version of the WDTV Live would play back HD videos from Youtube - then after some discussions with Google, the firmware was changed to only show low res versions. But perhaps Google want money for that.

IIRC, WDTV could be tricked with b-rad's firmware to access the HD stream. So, by 'blocked', do you mean it is not accessible by GTV at your end or from your browser itself? I am waiting to hear playback status on GTV from someone within the US for that video.

 

[dack70]



Quote:
Originally Posted by arswhat /forum/post/19447203


Btw dack (I just picked this to reply to, even though I want to say something else ;-) (and I agree btw)


If you are still up for a bit of experimentation, could you check out this site and see how it works?

http://vtuner.com/setupapp/guide/asp.../startpage.asp


It's a "virtual" radio tuner - with access to mostly radio (a few tv stations) with free content from around the world.

Some of these tuner sites worked, but others didn't. The ones that did not work required either winamp, win media player, or some plugin (my guess is it was looking for java or shockwave).


As for the two links Ganesh asked me to check out:


The Silverlight site did not work (required Silverlight installed). I tried to download and install Silverlight, but it did not work (no surprise there). The other site/video link played just fine.


I think it is valid to complain about Google's statement that it plays EVERYTHING on the web. However, I personally don't care and never expected it to. I can see how other people might expect it though. Unfortunately, EVERY company exaggerates in their advertising. Maybe I'm just used to it. As far as the overall experience using GTV, I never came accross a site that didn't do what I was looking for it to do. Meaning, you had to direct me to sites I would not normally go to using my GTV, to expose the lack of plugin support on GTV. If I'm in the mood to just surf the web and play Java games, etc... I'll do that from my desktop. I use GTV when I want to watch tv/movies/sports/video, and having the built in browser is complimentary to that experience. If Google simply replaced the EVERYTHING with MOST EVERYTHING on the web, they would be accurate. To me this is a little nick picky and not a big deal at all. That is just my humble opinion, however.

 

[jm9843]



Quote:
Originally Posted by dack70 /forum/post/19448875


As for the two links Ganesh asked me to check out:


The Silverlight site did not work (required Silverlight installed). I tried to download and install Silverlight, but it did not work (no surprise there). The other site/video link played just fine.

To add to this, Chrome on Google TV will take you as far as the Moonlight extension download page here . Based on positive comments made with regard to future extension support on the Google TV version of Chrome, it isn't unreasonable to think that Silverlight content will be supported in the future.


I also want to give a plug to Vimeo's recently launched Couch Mode for the TV - http://vimeo.com/couchmode . It looks & functions great on Google TV and should work fine on HTPC's as they don't seem to be detecting/blocking based on browser type.